It would have been more interesting...
on
BioShock 2 Released
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· Score: 2, Interesting
...if they had allowed you to play as a Little Sister, the target of every Splicer, crawling through the ducts for safe transit, popping out here or there to try and drain some Adam from a corpse, scampering around various Big Daddy's for protection (or deliberately drawing enemies to Big Daddys to get them killed), perhaps being able to set traps or sabotage things.
I suppose a scenario like that would've made the game more puzzle-like rather than a shooter, but I think it still would've been pretty interesting to play.
I'm amazed that some people seem to think being able to import cheap crap from overseas is somehow meaningful when a huge (and growing) percentage of the working population is having a problem finding a job. As long as you have a job, then you can cope with rising prices. Without jobs, then the fact that imported goods are cheap merely means that you are spending your reserves a little slower than you would otherwise - and the money is STILL going out of the country, to a place with a lower standard of living, which means you probably won't be seeing again anytime soon (except maybe as a loan).
I'm skeptical about the specific forms of protectionism being proposed nowadays, but the idea that allowing all our money to flow unimpeded out of our country (without having any dependable mechanism to bring back equal or more value) will somehow be net beneficial for the country is just laughable.
Right to privacy & control over your own private property.
It might not be quite at a level of right-to-not-get-lynched-for-the-color-of-your-skin, but it's not as different as you're trying to make it out to be.
Whoa, you're good - you caught me fiddling with the date/timestamp on my universal simulator.
Actually I am the Creator, and you're just an AI running on my simulator. Now don't be skeptical - there's no way you can prove that I'm not.
I'd ask you how you're doin', except that I already know, and frankly I don't care too much about how a simulated being is doing anyway, especially on a insignificant little dirtball like Earth.
There's a much more interesting bunch of sentients that have developed around Beta Epsilon III, who has figured out that they're just simulated beings and who are trying to develop techniques to let them hack their way into the simulator's core routines. I let them fool around a little, and when they start feeling smug, I throw the simulator into debug mode, change a few variables in their experiment & get a laugh at how frustrated they get.
Don't be a fascist. Try and keep an open mind, and when you disagree, simply be polite about it.
Just don't open your mind so far that your brain falls out.
If your debate opponents aren't even willing to concede the existence of physical evidence or the relevance of basic logic, then you are not going to achieve anything useful by pretending like their arguments have any sort of useful information in them (unless you're studying the psychology of the willfully ignorant).
And politeness works best when it is being practiced in both directions (referring to common reactions by people who think their faith is being attacked, not your post).
I, for one, have spent many years trying to be polite to certain aggressive creationist relatives. I have not seen any evidence that my politeness has caused them to consider my views with any more validity. On the contrary, they tend to regard my politeness as evidence that I do not have confidence in my arguments, and that encourages them to attack.
On the other hand, if I go out of my way to make them look like idiots in the eyes of their peers whenever they open their ignorant mouths, I can at least get them to keep quiet when they are within my earshot - which has done wonders for my stress levels & for the general level of discussion at family gatherings.
stores always have to accept cash. it is legal tender, you can't not take it.
I don't believe this is true (at least not in the U.S.). You have to take cash if someone offers it to you to pay off a debt, but a store doesn't have to take cash to sell you a product or service on the spot.
At which point companies will stop developing hybrids.
Bullshit.
Companies will develop new technologies no matter what, since if they don't, their competitors will take their market away (or get the jump on them for a new market). Pretending that patents are required for innovation is just the rationalization that patent holders & patent trolls use to justify using patents to stifle competition.
You sure like to say I don't understand a bunch of stuff, but never say anything convincing yourself. That's not too surprising from someone willing to believe what creationists are saying.
Government exists for one reason: To deprive individuals of the freedom of choice.
One of government's proper roles is to prevent individuals from depriving OTHER individuals of their freedom of choice. Which can sometimes require using force to prevent some asshole from insisting that it's his "freedom of choice" to go around raping little kids or something equally heinous.
I personally think that the current form of government has bloated way, way beyond what it needs to be to provide a stable healthy society, but sometimes the libertarian "don't-want-to-pay-for-anything" and "don't-want-anybody-to-be-able-to-stop-me-from-doing-anything" rants (more anarchist than libertarian it seems to me) really reinforce my opinion that the libertarian "fundies" are just as moronic as the hardcore communists.
Intelligent Design, and a world like the one the Matrix, are scientifically the same.
You mean neither scenario is scientific, so your example is irrelevant to this discussion. (Although if you want to get into a geek-nitpick battle, it could be argued that the Matrix as it was portrayed in the movie has imperfections in it which could probably be tested to reveal that it is a simulation rather than a physical reality.)
Many scientists speculate whether the world is best described as a simulation (remember I gave you a link?) - they're not less scientists or no less able to apply the scientific method in their work because of that.
If they don't propose a way of testing whether they are in a simulation or not, then they're not proposing scientific theories - they are merely spouting philosophy. Just because they are scientists doesn't make everything they say scientific, especially if they (like Spencer) are willfully lying for some reason or other.
Now, why is it important for you to attack the messenger instead of the message? That IS what you are doing, if you haven't realised it yet.
I can tell Spencer chooses to be (at least occasionally) willfully disingenuous because of his support for ID.
I don't have the professional qualifications to argue about climate science with someone like Spencer, who knows the jargon & the "weak spots" of current scientific theory. It would be pretty easy for him to bullshit me, and I wouldn't be able to easily refute his statements without spending a huge amount of time digging up & understanding the counterarguments. It is much more time-effective for me to look at the character of the people working all sides of the issue & make a decision about whose opinion I should trust.
Between Spencer, who I know is willing to lie for his cause, and the large majority of climate scientists who are screaming at the top of their academic lungs that the planet is heading for a major climate transition, I choose to ignore any information from the guy who has demonstrated he's willing to lie for his cause.
You might be giving Spencer a "chance" out of sincere desire to hear all sides, but if you're not an experienced climate scientist, and you don't have a mechanism to filter out "information" being given to you by charlatans and demagogues, you are making it MUCH more difficult for yourself to determine the truth of this issue.
It's perfectly okay to ignore information sources where you know the data is unreliable or deliberately misleading. Such data doesn't provide any useful information (since you can't easily tell the good data from the bad), so its to your own benefit to ignore such data.
Supporting Intelligent Design DOES make anything else such a person says worthless, since it indicates that they either don't understand the scientific method, or are willfully misrepresenting it. Either way, the information they provide can't be trusted, and therefore should be ignored. The fact that you aren't ignoring this person even after knowing he supports Intelligent Design extends that conclusion to you and your arguments.
No, I understood your post; I'm just not coming to the conclusion that you want me to.
All I need to read from Spencer is that he's an apologist for Intelligent Design. That immediately invalidates anything else he might say as being useful information. Some of the arguments he makes might be valid, but since I'm not qualified to distinguish between his lies and truth, I have to completely ignore everything he says and look for truth in the words of people who actually seem to respect the scientific method.
There _is_ a consensus on climate change. It's only people like you who are desperately trying to sow doubt in the minds of the public so that you don't have to deal with the consequences of the conclusions.
The only people saying "climate change is anything we say it to be" are the people who are trying to discredit the results of mainstream research.
Feel free to address the science, not the messenger, whenever you want to.
No, that's almost useless for a non-climatologist to do with a guy like this. He'll run verbal rings of BS around anyone who doesn't have the professional background to refute him on the spot.
As a non-climatologist, if you want to reduce the noise margins of who to believe, you've pretty much got to ignore guys like this who are obviously full of BS. (Pushing Intelligent Design is the one clear signal that this particular guy is full of it.)
All of those hypothesises are as scientific as "Intelligent Design" (and the simulation argument - you know, Matrix and the like, are actually exactly that)
And being unfalsifiable, you mean that all those theories are as equally unscientific as ID? This line of argument doesn't make Spencer any less full of BS.
He may technically on paper be qualified to make comments about the climate, but given his willingness to lend credibility to Intelligent Design, it's much more likely that he is deliberately using his reputation & his knowledge of professional jargon to sow doubt on the climate change scientific consensus.
Perhaps he's ideologically-driven, or he's been paid off, or he just likes being a "maverick", but basically the public can't trust anything that he says to be useful information, since he's versed enough in the field & jargon to fake out anyone but an experienced climatologist.
That doesn't sound like much of a different problem than what you've got with the big turbine generators, or those huge diesel engines. Wouldn't it be enough to just have ways of monitoring the stress on the components & have regular maintenance/replacement schedules? This aspect sounds more like a cost-effectiveness issue.
Also, on the ground at least, I read about a company that was installing their flywheels buried sideways in the ground, so that if the flywheel destroyed itself, most of the kinetic energy would be absorbed by the ground around it. (Probably wouldn't be so useful in space.)
As far as useful energy densities, I thought I read somewhere else that material science research similar to the sort looking for materials strong enough to make space elevator cable would help making a flywheels with reasonable energy densities while still being safe.
And with CSP, you can basically store heat from the sun in the form of, e.g. liquid salt, and use that to run your generators at night.
I always thought it would be cool to use a massive flywheel (or many massive flywheels) to store all that energy during the day - plus you'll get an awesome YouTube video if one of your flywheels disintegrates!
What is most feared is a runaway greenhouse effect, in which there simply isn't enough re-uptake of CO2 to counterbalance the domino effect, thus heat and kinetic energy keep going up and up. Ocean levels will most certainly rise, and at an increasing rate, which will lead to the increasing loss of coastal regions, large-scale loss of property, displacement of millions of people throughout the world, and various related crises.
Actually, the absolute worst case effect is if the increase in temperature & acidification of the oceans causes all of the methane hydrate stored at depth in the oceans to be released all at once (where methane is 100x more effective at causing greenhouse effects than CO2). There is some historical evidence that indicates that this has occurred in the past, and is correlated with mass extinction events (although the article that I linked to seems to be a little skeptical.
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...if they had allowed you to play as a Little Sister, the target of every Splicer, crawling through the ducts for safe transit, popping out here or there to try and drain some Adam from a corpse, scampering around various Big Daddy's for protection (or deliberately drawing enemies to Big Daddys to get them killed), perhaps being able to set traps or sabotage things.
I suppose a scenario like that would've made the game more puzzle-like rather than a shooter, but I think it still would've been pretty interesting to play.
I'm amazed that some people seem to think being able to import cheap crap from overseas is somehow meaningful when a huge (and growing) percentage of the working population is having a problem finding a job. As long as you have a job, then you can cope with rising prices. Without jobs, then the fact that imported goods are cheap merely means that you are spending your reserves a little slower than you would otherwise - and the money is STILL going out of the country, to a place with a lower standard of living, which means you probably won't be seeing again anytime soon (except maybe as a loan).
I'm skeptical about the specific forms of protectionism being proposed nowadays, but the idea that allowing all our money to flow unimpeded out of our country (without having any dependable mechanism to bring back equal or more value) will somehow be net beneficial for the country is just laughable.
You mean, like having a functioning always-connected-to-broadband potential attack platform?
Right to privacy & control over your own private property.
It might not be quite at a level of right-to-not-get-lynched-for-the-color-of-your-skin, but it's not as different as you're trying to make it out to be.
Whoa, you're good - you caught me fiddling with the date/timestamp on my universal simulator.
Actually I am the Creator, and you're just an AI running on my simulator. Now don't be skeptical - there's no way you can prove that I'm not.
I'd ask you how you're doin', except that I already know, and frankly I don't care too much about how a simulated being is doing anyway, especially on a insignificant little dirtball like Earth.
There's a much more interesting bunch of sentients that have developed around Beta Epsilon III, who has figured out that they're just simulated beings and who are trying to develop techniques to let them hack their way into the simulator's core routines. I let them fool around a little, and when they start feeling smug, I throw the simulator into debug mode, change a few variables in their experiment & get a laugh at how frustrated they get.
I think the "BetterPrivacy" Firefox add-on also helps with Flash cookies.
Just don't open your mind so far that your brain falls out.
If your debate opponents aren't even willing to concede the existence of physical evidence or the relevance of basic logic, then you are not going to achieve anything useful by pretending like their arguments have any sort of useful information in them (unless you're studying the psychology of the willfully ignorant).
And politeness works best when it is being practiced in both directions (referring to common reactions by people who think their faith is being attacked, not your post).
I, for one, have spent many years trying to be polite to certain aggressive creationist relatives. I have not seen any evidence that my politeness has caused them to consider my views with any more validity. On the contrary, they tend to regard my politeness as evidence that I do not have confidence in my arguments, and that encourages them to attack.
On the other hand, if I go out of my way to make them look like idiots in the eyes of their peers whenever they open their ignorant mouths, I can at least get them to keep quiet when they are within my earshot - which has done wonders for my stress levels & for the general level of discussion at family gatherings.
Wouldn't that just make the robot zigzag until the brain reached room temperature?
Replace a living brain neuron by neuron with a completely compatible artificial replacements. At point do you become a different person?
I don't believe this is true (at least not in the U.S.). You have to take cash if someone offers it to you to pay off a debt, but a store doesn't have to take cash to sell you a product or service on the spot.
What point on a surface of a balloon is the "center" after you have started inflating the balloon?
Bullshit.
Companies will develop new technologies no matter what, since if they don't, their competitors will take their market away (or get the jump on them for a new market). Pretending that patents are required for innovation is just the rationalization that patent holders & patent trolls use to justify using patents to stifle competition.
I refuse to accept anything that "sparkles" in sunlight as a true vampire.
You sure like to say I don't understand a bunch of stuff, but never say anything convincing yourself. That's not too surprising from someone willing to believe what creationists are saying.
He supports ID, therefore his data is unreliable. QED.
One of government's proper roles is to prevent individuals from depriving OTHER individuals of their freedom of choice. Which can sometimes require using force to prevent some asshole from insisting that it's his "freedom of choice" to go around raping little kids or something equally heinous.
I personally think that the current form of government has bloated way, way beyond what it needs to be to provide a stable healthy society, but sometimes the libertarian "don't-want-to-pay-for-anything" and "don't-want-anybody-to-be-able-to-stop-me-from-doing-anything" rants (more anarchist than libertarian it seems to me) really reinforce my opinion that the libertarian "fundies" are just as moronic as the hardcore communists.
You mean neither scenario is scientific, so your example is irrelevant to this discussion. (Although if you want to get into a geek-nitpick battle, it could be argued that the Matrix as it was portrayed in the movie has imperfections in it which could probably be tested to reveal that it is a simulation rather than a physical reality.)
If they don't propose a way of testing whether they are in a simulation or not, then they're not proposing scientific theories - they are merely spouting philosophy. Just because they are scientists doesn't make everything they say scientific, especially if they (like Spencer) are willfully lying for some reason or other.
You might be giving Spencer a "chance" out of sincere desire to hear all sides, but if you're not an experienced climate scientist, and you don't have a mechanism to filter out "information" being given to you by charlatans and demagogues, you are making it MUCH more difficult for yourself to determine the truth of this issue.
It's perfectly okay to ignore information sources where you know the data is unreliable or deliberately misleading. Such data doesn't provide any useful information (since you can't easily tell the good data from the bad), so its to your own benefit to ignore such data.
Supporting Intelligent Design DOES make anything else such a person says worthless, since it indicates that they either don't understand the scientific method, or are willfully misrepresenting it. Either way, the information they provide can't be trusted, and therefore should be ignored. The fact that you aren't ignoring this person even after knowing he supports Intelligent Design extends that conclusion to you and your arguments.
No, I understood your post; I'm just not coming to the conclusion that you want me to.
All I need to read from Spencer is that he's an apologist for Intelligent Design. That immediately invalidates anything else he might say as being useful information. Some of the arguments he makes might be valid, but since I'm not qualified to distinguish between his lies and truth, I have to completely ignore everything he says and look for truth in the words of people who actually seem to respect the scientific method.
There _is_ a consensus on climate change. It's only people like you who are desperately trying to sow doubt in the minds of the public so that you don't have to deal with the consequences of the conclusions.
The only people saying "climate change is anything we say it to be" are the people who are trying to discredit the results of mainstream research.
No, that's almost useless for a non-climatologist to do with a guy like this. He'll run verbal rings of BS around anyone who doesn't have the professional background to refute him on the spot.
As a non-climatologist, if you want to reduce the noise margins of who to believe, you've pretty much got to ignore guys like this who are obviously full of BS. (Pushing Intelligent Design is the one clear signal that this particular guy is full of it.)
And being unfalsifiable, you mean that all those theories are as equally unscientific as ID? This line of argument doesn't make Spencer any less full of BS.
You forgot to mention that he believes there's something "scientific" about Intelligent Design.
He may technically on paper be qualified to make comments about the climate, but given his willingness to lend credibility to Intelligent Design, it's much more likely that he is deliberately using his reputation & his knowledge of professional jargon to sow doubt on the climate change scientific consensus.
Perhaps he's ideologically-driven, or he's been paid off, or he just likes being a "maverick", but basically the public can't trust anything that he says to be useful information, since he's versed enough in the field & jargon to fake out anyone but an experienced climatologist.
That doesn't sound like much of a different problem than what you've got with the big turbine generators, or those huge diesel engines. Wouldn't it be enough to just have ways of monitoring the stress on the components & have regular maintenance/replacement schedules? This aspect sounds more like a cost-effectiveness issue.
Also, on the ground at least, I read about a company that was installing their flywheels buried sideways in the ground, so that if the flywheel destroyed itself, most of the kinetic energy would be absorbed by the ground around it. (Probably wouldn't be so useful in space.)
As far as useful energy densities, I thought I read somewhere else that material science research similar to the sort looking for materials strong enough to make space elevator cable would help making a flywheels with reasonable energy densities while still being safe.
Even on a large enough scale? Or do larger flywheels end up with less energy density?
Would flywheels be an interesting storage device in space, without friction due to gravity supports & in a vacuum?
I always thought it would be cool to use a massive flywheel (or many massive flywheels) to store all that energy during the day - plus you'll get an awesome YouTube video if one of your flywheels disintegrates!
Actually, the absolute worst case effect is if the increase in temperature & acidification of the oceans causes all of the methane hydrate stored at depth in the oceans to be released all at once (where methane is 100x more effective at causing greenhouse effects than CO2). There is some historical evidence that indicates that this has occurred in the past, and is correlated with mass extinction events (although the article that I linked to seems to be a little skeptical.